Sept. 2026
Ben Shragge

Between the decline in literacy and attention spans, the rise in conspiracy theories and antisemitism, the collapse of the rules-based international order, and the incipient AI apocalypse — to name just a few signs of our times — it’s easy to despair of humanity’s future. Who isn’t tempted to say with the Psalmist in haste, “All men are false”? I, for one, have certainly entertained the thought. But I’ve also found an effective antidote to doom and gloom: becoming a parent.
This may seem counterintuitive. After all, if the world is going to hell in a handbasket, why bring new lives along for the ride? I’ll answer in ascending order of seriousness.

First, little kids keep you too busy to curl up into a fetal ball. Who has time to doomscroll when, at any given moment, there’s half a pint of strawberries to slice? To be honest, even as the father of a four-year-old and a two-year-old, I still find time to doomscroll. But if I didn’t have kids, even more of my supposed “free time” would go towards device enslavement. The regular, predictable routine imposed by highly dependent dependents leaves little mental space for existential angst.

More importantly, you can’t give up on the future when you’re directly invested in its viability. As much as I hope to live until 120, I’m unlikely to make it to the next century. But my kids, God willing, will be there to greet the year 2100. What kind of world will they inherit? Will they have robot servants or be serving robots?

Obviously, I can’t say, but I’m personally motivated to work towards a better future. Moreover, raising decent human beings is a small but meaningful way to help avert, or at least mitigate, doomsday. We need more smart, capable, and moral people to solve the problems of the future, let alone the problems plaguing us now. As we read in Pirkei Avot, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” Ensuring the intergenerational transmission of values that were once passed down to me is my modest contribution to the project.

Hannah Arendt writes that parents “have not only summoned their children into life through conception and birth, they have simultaneously introduced them into a world.” We then, through education, “assume responsibility for both, for the life and development of the child and for the continuance of the world.” The world doesn’t just roll on through inertia. Or, to be more precise, the world may continue without human effort, but not a recognizably human world. If we want our children to inherit more than just ruins, we need to help preserve the civilization we’ve inherited, and teach them to treasure and preserve it in turn.

The world also requires rejuvenation, which is the gift that children give us. As Arendt puts it, in order to preserve the world against the mortality of its creators and inhabitants, “it must be constantly set right anew.” Education is the process of teaching children (and, indeed, adults) to set the world right anew, based on the wisdom of the past.
Our personal decision about starting a family has massive cumulative consequences. Birth rates have been falling worldwide, raising the prospect of a drastic shortage of workers, taxpayers, and, most importantly, citizens, which could lead to economic and social collapse. Over two-thirds of all countries now have below-replacement fertility. Likely causes include the isolation brought about by phones and technology, changing norms regarding marriage and parenthood, an educational arms race that delays or overrides family formation, and the high costs of housing and child care. But in a New York Times essay, Anna Louie Sussman also points to a broader sense of existential doubt: “young people’s inescapable and crushing sense that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood.”

On the contrary, I’d argue, parenthood is the best way to resolve existential doubt. I haven’t gained any certainty about the future by having kids, but I’ve been granted a sense of purpose that gets me through the day, and an unwillingness to give up on humanity that you could even call faith.